The missing Malaysia Airlines flight's final transmission may have been before its communications system was disabled casting doubt on the theory that the pilots hijacked their own plane.

Investigators still say the plane was deliberately diverted during its overnight flight and flew off-course for hours.

They haven't ruled out hijacking, sabotage, or pilot suicide, and they are checking the backgrounds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members, as well as the ground crew, to see if links to terrorists, personal problems or psychological issues could be factors.

Family members of passengers onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vote to talk directly to Malaysian government's representatives during a meeting with the airline's representatives at Lido Hotel in Beijing on Monday

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said finding the plane was still the main focus, and he did not rule out that it might be discovered intact.

'The fact that there was no distress signal, no ransom notes, no parties claiming responsibility, there is always hope,' Hishammuddin said at a news conference.

Malaysian Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said an initial investigation indicated that the last words heard from the plane by ground controllers - 'All right, good night' - were spoken by the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid.

Had it been a voice other than that of Fariq or the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, it would have clearest indication yet of something amiss in the cockpit before the flight went off-course.

Malaysian officials said earlier that those words came after one of the jetliner's data communications systems - the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System - had been switched off, suggesting the voice from the cockpit may have been trying to deceive ground controllers.

Vigil: Residents of Boeung Kak Lake light candles to spell MH370 during a Buddhist ceremony, praying for the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370, in Phnom Penh in Cambodia, on Monday

Chinese relatives of passengers from MH370 leave after a meeting with airline officials at the Metro Park Lido Hotel in Beijing on Monday

Officials will ask friends of Mr Hamid if they think he was speaking normally.

Malaysian Defense Minister
Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference Monday that finding the
plane was still the main focus, and he did not rule out finding it
intact.

'A GOOD BOY': NOTHING BUT PRAISE FOR MH370 CO-PILOT

It has emerged that Fariq Abdul Hamid had his reputation called into question by a South African woman who accused him of inviting her to join him in the cockpit for a journey in 2011, in breach of security rules.

Malaysia Airlines said it was ‘shocked’ by the reported security violation, but could not verify the claims.

But those who knew him have described the son of a top state civil servant as a mild-mannered young man with a bright piloting future who is reported to have been engaged to wed a woman he met in flight school nine years ago.

Mr Hamid regularly visited his neighbourhood mosque outside Kuala Lumpur where he also attended occasional Islamic courses, said Ahmad Sharafi Ali Asrah, the mosque's imam or spiritual leader, who called him ‘a good boy’.

Mr Hamid appeared in a CNN travel segment in February in which he helped fly a plane from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur.

It chronicled his transition to piloting the Boeing 777-200 after having completed training in a flight simulator.

CNN correspondent Richard Quest called Fariq's technique ‘textbook-perfect,’ according to the network's website.

Meanwhile, footage has emerged of Hamid in a training session a month before the Malaysian Airlines flight disappeared.

CNN aviation expert Richard Quest filmed the 27-year-old who said he had 2,700 hours of flight experience.

When asked about flying, he told Mr Quest that he 'just loved it'. 'It was a wonderful experience, particularly flying the larger big triple 7 plane that we were onboard,' he said.

According to Quest, Hamid had carried out a 'textbook landing' on that day he was filmed.

'The fact that
there was no distress signal, no ransom notes, no parties claiming
responsibility, there is always hope,' Hishammuddin said.

Meanwhile, footage emerged showing the aircraft's pilots walking through security for the final time before take-off.

CCTV captured Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, pilot of the Boeing 777 flight, being frisked while walking through security at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

He is then joined by co-pilot Fariq Hamid who is also searched before the pair walk onto the plane.

The final words from the aircraft gave no indication anything was wrong even though one of the plane's communications systems had already been disabled, adding to suspicions that someone who knew the controls was involved in the disappearance.

Officials also said today that it is possible the aircraft could have landed and transmitted a satellite signal from the ground.

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Shah, a father-of-three, described as 'loving and generous' in an online tribute video was said to be a 'fanatical' supporter of the country's opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim - jailed for homosexuality just hours before the jet disappeared.

It has also been revealed that the pilot's wife and three children moved out of the family home the day before the plane went missing.

Some senior US officials believe it is possible the plane was taken as part of a ‘dry run’ for a future terrorist attack – in order to find out whether a plane can be hidden from radar and satellites.

While investigators visited the homes
of Shah and Hamid, it was also revealed by Malaysian police that the
two pilots did not request to fly together, reported the Wall Street
Journal.

It comes as FBI
investigators say the disappearance of MH370 may have been ‘an act of
piracy’ and the possibility that hundreds of passengers are being held
at an unknown location has not been ruled out.

If the plane was intact and had enough electrical power in reserve, it would be able to send out a radar 'ping'.

'All right, good night' was spoken at 1.19am on Saturday March 8 from the Beijing-bound flight to air traffic controllers in Malaysia rather than the usual sign-off of ‘Roger and out’.

Whoever was talking did not mention a problem with the flight, suggesting an attempt was made to mislead ground control.

Footage: Co-pilot Fariq Hamid who was also searched before the pair walked onto the plane

Co-pilot Fariq Hamid is frisked by security at Kuala Lumpar International Airport before the flight took off

Two minutes later the
transponder - which sends out an identifying signal - was switched off. Turning it off is simply a matter of flipping a switch in the cockpit.

Shortly afterwards the aircraft climbed to 45,000 feet and turned sharply to head back across
the Malaysian peninsula. It later travelled some distance at 23,000 feet and even dipped down to 5,000 feet.

Authorities have said someone on board the plane also disabled one of its communications systems - the Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS.

This is a message sent every 30 minutes to maintenance crews that indicates the plane's speed, altitude, position and fuel levels.

It made its last transmission at 1.07am, just before the last words from the co-pilot.

But
it didn't send a transmission at 1.37am, so at some point in the preceding half an hour it had been switched off, a task that requires considerable expertise.

'TERRAIN MASKING': HOW TO USE LANDSCAPE TO KEEP OUT OF SIGHT

The missing jet was deliberately dropped to a height of just 5,000ft to avoid commercial radar after it turned away from its routine path, it was claimed today.

Investigators have told Malaysian newspaper the New Straits Times that the Boeing 777 could have flown low over the Bay of Bengal, avoiding radar in a number of countries.

On military radar, investigators told the New Straits Times, the aircraft would have registered as just a blip. But the stresses on the 200 ton aircraft flying at that height would have been enormous and highly dangerous for the structure.

Investigators said they believed whoever was controlling the plane had flown close to land, or over it, in what is known as 'terrain masking' - using the surrounding landscape to keep out of sight of radar.

The technique is used by pilots of military aircraft to fly to their targets without detection - but it is dangerous and in the dark it would be extremely difficult, calling on great skills.

Maneuvering a large aircraft like the 777 in this way would be a feat judged to be almost impossible, but investigators say they are certain that the aircraft did drop to 5,000ft or possibly lower, in what is thought to be an attempt to avoid commercial radar.

As authorities examined a flight simulator that was confiscated from the home of one of the pilots and dug through the background of all 239 people on board and the ground crew that serviced the plane, they also were grappling with the enormity of the search ahead of them, warning they needed more data to narrow down the hunt for the aircraft.

On Saturday, Malaysia's government confirmed that the plane was deliberately diverted and may have flown as far north as Central Asia, or south into the vast reaches of the Indian Ocean.

Given the expanse of land and water that might need to be searched, the wreckage of the plane might take months - or longer - to find, or might never be located.

Establishing
what happened with any degree of certainty will likely need key
information, including cockpit voice recordings, from the plane's flight
data recorders.

'The search was already a highly complex, multinational effort. It has now become even more difficult,' Malaysia Airline chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said.

The search effort initially focused on the relatively shallow waters of the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca, where the plane was first thought to be.

Minister of Transport Hishammuddin
said he had asked governments to hand over sensitive radar and
satellite data to try and help get a better idea of the plane's final movements.

The search area now includes 11
countries the plane might have flown over, Hishammuddin said, adding
that the number of countries involved in the operation had increased
from 14 to 25.

It
has emerged that Mr Hamid had his reputation called into
question by a South African woman who accused him of inviting her to
join him in the cockpit for a journey in 2011, in breach of security
rules.

Timeline: The above graphic shows how the situation may have developed

Malaysia Airlines said it was ‘shocked’ by the reported security violation, but could not verify the claims.

But
those who knew him have described the son of a top state civil servant
as a mild-mannered young man with a bright piloting future who is
reported to have been engaged to wed a woman he met in flight school
nine years ago.

Probe: Police in Malaysia have searched the home of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah (right) and Fariq Abdul Hamid (left) after officials confirmed the plane was taken over by a 'deliberate act'

On board: Student Firman Siregar, pictured centre with his family, was one of the 239 aboard Flight MH370

Peter Chong (left) with best friend Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah (right), pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. He is pictured in a T-shirt with a Democracy is Dead slogan as police investigate claims he could have hijacked the plane as an anti-government protest

Mr Hamid regularly visited his neighbourhood mosque outside Kuala Lumpur where he also attended occasional Islamic courses, said Ahmad Sharafi Ali Asrah, the mosque's imam or spiritual leader, who called him ‘a good boy’.

Mr Hamid appeared in a CNN travel segment in February in which he helped fly a plane from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur.

It chronicled his transition to piloting the Boeing 777-200 after having completed training in a flight simulator.

CNN correspondent Richard Quest called Fariq's technique ‘textbook-perfect,’ according to the network's website.

The government has called on the public not to ‘jump to conclusions’ about the two men, saying they were not on record as asking to fly together on March 8.

Sympathetic tributes to them have poured out online with friends of Captain Shah posting a YouTube video that a contains a gallery of photographs of him and a soundtrack of Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

At the end of the video a message appears that reads 'loving, reflective, generous, cool, sporting, intelligent, supportive... the list goes on and on'.

Malaysian media reports have quoted colleagues as calling Mr Shah a 'superb' and highly respected pilot, while acquaintances remember a gentle man who was handy both in the kitchen and around the house.

Meanwhile, footage has emerged of Hamid in a training session a month before the Malaysian Airlines flight disappeared.

Memories: One of several photographs that appears on a YouTube tribute video to Captain Shah

Touching: The video is accompanied by a version of Somewhere Over A Rainbow

Looking back: A picture of Captain Shah when he was younger

Anguish: The video expresses hope that Captain Shah and the passengers and crew will return safe and sound

Plea: The video asks for Mr Shah to come home

CNN aviation expert Richard Quest filmed the 27-year-old who said he had 2,700 hours of flight experience.

When asked about flying, he told Mr Quest that he 'just loved it'. 'It was a wonderful experience, particularly flying the larger big triple 7 plane that we were onboard,' he said.

According to Quest, Hamid had carried out a 'textbook landing' on that day he was filmed.

Hamid joined the airline in 2007 while Captain Shah, 53, began working for Malaysia Airlines in 1981 and had more than 18,000 hours of flying experience.

Former Concorde captain Jock Lowe told Sky News that a civilian airliner disappearing in Europe would be 'unthinkable' as military fighter jets would have been scrambled.

He said: 'In European airspace, if an aeroplane was out of communication, some military aircraft would be sent up very quickly to intercept it. It's unthinkable that it would have happened in Europe. It just couldn't happen in most places in the world.'

The photographs that show what the atmosphere on MH370 would have been like as it was flown deliberately off-course

Out of respect to the missing passengers and crew of MH370, that flight code no longer exists.

It's been replaced by MH318 - and a photographer took pictures on board as it followed the route north from Kuala Lumpur just over a week after MH370 vanished.

The pictures show just how big the 777 is, with nine seats stretching across the economy class cabin.

As the passengers peered through the terminal windows at the waiting aircraft, they would have seen a machine that's six storeys high, with a wingspan of 200ft.

Tracing the journey: Passengers in their seats onboard Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER flight MH318 as it cruises towards Beijing at approximately 1.30am on Monday. MH318 replaces the flight number of the missing airplane, MH370, as a mark of respect to the passengers and crew

Heading north: A map on MH318 showing the plane positioned at the same point over the South China Sea as MH370 was when it was last seen on civilian radar

How MH370 would have looked: Flight MH318 to Beijing sits on the tarmac as passengers are reflected on the glass at the boarding gate at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in the early hours of Monday

Peaceful: A Chinese passenger uses her tablet computer as other passengers sleep onboard MH318 as it cruises towards Beijing over the South China Sea at approximately 2:40am on Monday

As the plane passes over the exact last known position of MH370 the passengers seem happy and relaxed.

Some are sleeping, while others watch movies or use their tablet computers.

There would have been a similar scene on board the MH370 flight as its communications systems were deliberately switched off and whoever was in control turned the aircraft west, away from its designated course.

It was a night flight, so it's extremely unlikely that any of the passengers would have known that something was amiss.

Satellite data suggests MH370 could be anywhere in either of two vast corridors that arc through much of Asia: one stretching north from Laos to the Caspian, the other south from west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra into the southern Indian Ocean west of Australia.

Aviation officials in Pakistan, India, and Central Asian countries Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - as well as Taliban militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan - said they knew nothing about the whereabouts of the plane.

‘The idea that the plane flew through Indian airspace for several hours without anyone noticing is bizarre,’ a defence ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan, who are seeking to oust foreign troops and set up an Islamic state, said the missing plane had nothing to do with them.

‘It happened outside Afghanistan and you can see that even countries with very advanced equipment and facilities cannot figure out where it went,’ he said. ‘So we also do not have any information as it is an external issue.’

A commander with the Pakistani Taliban, a separate entity fighting the Pakistani government, said the fragmented group could only dream about such an operation.

'We wish we had an opportunity to hijack such a plane,' he told Reuters by telephone from the lawless North Waziristan region.

China, which has been vocal in its impatience with Malaysian efforts to find the plane, called on its smaller neighbour to ‘immediately’ expand and clarify the scope of the search. About two-thirds of the passengers aboard MH370 were Chinese.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he had spoken to Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak by telephone, and had offered more surveillance resources in addition to the two P-3C Orion aircraft his country has already committed.

Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said diplomatic notes had been sent to all countries along the northern and southern search corridors, requesting radar and satellite information as well as land, sea and air search operations.

The Malaysian navy and air force were also searching the southern corridor, he said, and U.S. P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft were being sent to Perth, in Western Australia, to help scour the ocean.

HOW MAKING MH370 DISAPPEAR WOULD HAVE TAKEN REAL EXPERTISE

The final picture: The missing jet is pictured here in February this year above Polish airspace

Whether by accident or design, whoever reached across the dimly lit cockpit of a Malaysia Airlines jet and clicked off a transponder to make Flight MH370 vanish from controllers' radars flew into a navigational and technical black hole.

By choosing one place and time to vanish into radar darkness with 238 others on board, the person - presumed to be a pilot or a passenger with advanced knowledge - may have acted only after meticulous planning, according to aviation experts.

Understanding the sequence that led to the unprecedented plane hunt widening across two vast tracts of territory north and south of the Equator is key to grasping the motives of what Malaysian authorities suspect was hijacking or sabotage.

By signing off from Malaysian airspace at 1.19 a.m. on March 8 with a casual ‘all right, good night,’ rather than the crisp radio drill advocated in pilot training, a person now believed to be the co-pilot gave no hint of anything unusual.

Two minutes later, at 1.21 a.m. local time, the transponder - a device identifying jets to ground controllers - was turned off in a move that experts say could reveal a careful sequence.

‘Every action taken by the person who was piloting the aircraft appears to be a deliberate one. It is almost like a pilot's checklist,’ said one senior captain from an Asian carrier with experience of jets including the Boeing 777.

There is so far no indication whether the co-pilot was at fault or had anything to do with turning off the transponder. Pilots say the usual industry convention is that the pilot not directly responsible for flying the plane talks on the radio.

Police have searched the premises of both the captain and co-pilot and are checking the backgrounds of all passengers.

Whoever turned the transponder to ‘off’, whether or not the move was deliberate, did so at a vulnerable point between two airspace sectors when Malaysian and Vietnamese controllers could easily assume the airplane was each others' responsibility.

‘The predictable effect was to delay the raising of the alarm by either party,’ David Learmount, operations and safety editor at Flight International, wrote in an industry blog.

That mirrors delays in noticing something was wrong when an Air France jet disappeared over the Atlantic in 2009 with 228 people on board, a gap blamed on confusion between controllers.

Yet whereas the Rio-Paris disaster was later traced to pilot error, the suspected kidnapping of MH370's passengers and crew was carried out with either skill or bizarre coincidences.

Whether or not pilots knew it, the jet was just then in a technically obscure sweet spot, according to a top radar expert.

Air traffic controllers use secondary radar which works by talking to the transponder. Some air traffic control systems also blend in some primary radar, which uses a simple echo.

But primary radar signals fade faster than secondary ones, meaning even a residual blip would have vanished for controllers and even military radar may have found it difficult to identify the 777 from other ghostly blips, said radar expert Hans Weber.

‘Turning off the transponder indicates this person was highly trained,’ said Weber, of consultancy TECOP International.

The overnight flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur is packed year-round with business people, Chinese tourists and students, attracted in part by code-sharing deals, regular travellers say.

The lockdown of MH370 may have begun as early as 40 minutes into the flight at a point when meals are being hurriedly served in time to get trays cleared and lights dimmed for the night.

‘It was a red-eye flight. Most people - the passengers and the crew - just want to rest,’ a Malaysia Airlines stewardess said. ‘Unless there was a reason to panic, if someone had taken control of the aircraft, they would not have noticed anything.’

At some point between 1.07 a.m. and 1.37 a.m., investigators believe someone switched off another system called ACARS designed to transmit maintenance data back to the ground.

While unusual, this may not necessarily raise alarms at the airline and the passengers would not have known that something was amiss, said some of the six pilots contacted by Reuters, none of whom agreed to be identified because of company rules.

‘Occasionally, there are gaps in the communications systems and the guys in ground operations may not think much of it initially. It would be a while before they try to find out what was wrong,’ said one captain with an Asian carrier.

Cutting the datalink would not have been easy. Instructions are not in the Flight Crew Operating Manual, one pilot said.

Whoever did so may have had to climb through a trap door in full view of cabin crew, people familiar with the jet say.

Circuit-breakers used to disable the system are in a bay reached through a hatch in the floor next to the lefthand front exit, close to a galley used to prepare meals.

Most pilots said it would be impossible to turn off ACARS from inside the cockpit, though two people did not rule it out.

Malaysia Airlines said 14 minutes elapsed between the last ACARS message and the transponder shutdown that - in the growing view of officials - confirmed a fully loaded jet was on the run. The ACARS must have been disabled within 16 minutes after that.

In the meantime a voice believed to be that of the co-pilot issued the last words from MH370 and the transponder went dead.

The northeast-bound jet now took a northwestern route from Kota Bahru in eastern Malaysia to Penang Island. It was last detected on military radar around 200 miles northwest of Penang.Even that act of going off course may not have caused alarm at first if it was handled gradually, pilots said.

‘Nobody pays attention to these things unless they are aware of the direction that the aircraft was heading in,’ said one first officer who has flown with Malaysia Airlines.

The airline said it had reconstructed the event in a simulator to try to figure out how the jet vanished and kept flying for what may have been more than seven hours.

Pilots say whoever was then in control may have kept the radio on in silent mode to hear what was going on around him, but would have avoided restarting the transponder at all costs.

‘That would immediately make the aircraft visible ... like a bright light. Your registration, height, altitude and speed would all become visible,’ said an airline captain.

After casting off its identity, the aircraft set investigators a puzzle that has yet to be solved. It veered either northwards or southwards, within an hour's flying time of arcs stretching from the Caspian to the southern Indian Ocean.

The best way to avoid the attention of military radars would have been to fly at a fixed altitude, on a recognised flight path and at cruising speed without changing course, pilots say.

Malaysian officials dismissed as speculation reports that the jet may have flown at low altitude to avoid detection.

But pilots said the best chance of feeling its way through the well-defended northern route would have been to hide in full view of military radar inside commercial lanes - raising awkward questions over security in several parts of the Asia-Pacific.

‘The military radar controllers would have seen him moving on a fixed line, figured that it was a commercial aircraft at a high altitude, and not really a danger especially if he was on a recognised flight path,’ said one pilot.

‘Some countries would ask you to identify yourself, but you are flying through the night and that is the time when the least attention is being paid to unidentified aircraft. As long as the aircraft is not flying towards a military target or point, they may not bother with you.’

Although investigators refused on Monday to be drawn into theories, few in the industry believe a 250-tonne passenger jet could run amok globally without expert skills or preparation.

‘Whoever did this must have had lots of aircraft knowledge, would have deliberately planned this, had nerves of steel to be confident enough to get through primary radar without being detected and been confident enough to control an aircraft full of people,’ a veteran airline captain told Reuters.